Denouement
by biggrstaffbunch
Summary: hope is a living, breathing thing. buffy learns to deal with the uncertainty postNFA, but the girl's never been good at waiting. [romancehumor, noncomics compliant]


A/N: Non-comics compliant : ) Feedback is love!

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She thinks about him more than she knows she ought to.

The world's ended too many times for her already, and she's a normal girl now. There's no reason to lie awake in bed and twist her fingers restlessly through her sheets, wondering about law-firms and prophecies and new reports of an entire block in Los Angeles collapsing underneath itself. She's got another life, with sweet, sticky gelato and sweaty, tumbly training and warm, welcome sunshine. She's grown up, but she's not cookie dough, and there's no place for him in her life, nor for her in his.

But hope's not as easy a kill as the fledglings that break through Roman dirt, the vamps that are easily dispatched and boring and besides, she's not bilingual enough to quip with them. Hope's not something she can run away from like an entire town and seven years of memories crumbling beneath her feet. Hope still lingers like a demon lying dormant in her tightly-strung body, and really, Buffy was never one for Poltergeist anyway. It's a nervous, tender, anticipatory demon, clawing at her gut and tickling the back of her throat whenever she sees broad shoulders and dark hair. One time when she was strolling through the piazza, picking grapes from the vendors and enjoying the bitter, tart taste against her tongue, she caught a glimpse of heavy brow and dark jacket, and after that, the demon wouldn't let her have grapes again without wanting to vomit.

She has no place in this personifying-emotions-as-a-minion-from-hell limbo, she thinks irritably. It's not fair.

Giles and Dawn and even Andrew walk on eggshells around her, and the looks on their faces seem to wait for some sort of breakdown that won't come. He's not dead, after all. She'd know.

And that's probably the whole damn point, if she gets right down to thinking about it. He's _not_ dead and he got involved in a nasty fight that, in all plausibility, could have turned into a massive Apocalypse, and he hadn't _told_ her. Aside from the irresponsibility (hello, end-of-the-world _not_ just his problem, here) it was also really damn petty. And it smacks of chauvinistic. In the back of her mind, as she rides her Vespa to work, she can hear his voice.

_"Well, you didn't let me fight in your Apocalypse, either."_ or the ever popular, _"I couldn't risk you getting hurt, Buffy."_

And then sometimes, when the demon's asleep and there's no more hope, and it's night, just bleak, hopeless night--

_"It wasn't your place to fight beside me. I didn't need you."_

Which is obviously stupid because hey--towns falling into holes? That's something Buffy's sure she could have helped him with.

Buffy laughs at the irony before her scythe sings through the air, catching an unlucky vampire in the chest. Dust.

There are so many slayers now. Everywhere. Her duty is to them now, as a mother or a sister or a really cool aunt who shows them how to have sacred birthrights and kill stuff. It's not with him, not anymore. She's not sixteen, shiny-eyed with big dreams and the fragile illusions of romance and a long future of sitting by the graveside, telling stories to their little grandvampbabies.

She laughs again as her heel strikes a fledgling in its knee. Because she looks at these other girls now, sixteen or fourteen or thirteen year old girls from all walks of life with all kinds of problems and temperaments and pasts, and she cannot imagine _one_ of them falling in love with a vampire and inspiring another to get his soul. She understands now why she used to say she was the loneliest girl in the world. Not because she was the Slayer.

Because she has that demon inside of her, whispering all these impossibilities, all these wistful, pleading lies and telling her that she's different, that she could be in love with a dead man and stay in love with a dead man and a dead man could really, truly love her. That man could be monster could be man could be monster again. That they are eternal, just as death is, and if she can keep on dying, he can at least keep coming back.

Buffy wonders if it's true. Like, if the demon is something she's manifested or something that's been created and now lives within her like she's some sort of notvamp. Does it know something she doesn't? Does it know that even though he always walks away, he'll always come back?

When she sees a gorgeous, antique claddagh ring in a vendor's tray (and look at that, the Irish symbol of devotion in Italy, her life really is a mess of contradiction) her breath catches and the years fall away. Everything's meant to be, right? She's a slayer, right? Death is her calling, death is her gift. A gift given to her, instead of a gift she can give.

Maybe he _will_ come back to her.

Her fists strike back even more violently than usual that night, because she's been duped again. Wishful thinking, she thinks sternly, and then the quiet, desperate voice of a Nina Ash on her answering machine.

_"Hi,"_ the voice has said uncertainly, _"Look, I know this is probably the most cringeworthy thing I could ever do, well except on a full-moon night, but-"_ nervous laughter, _"-I probably shouldn't tell you that. Um, see, the thing is, Angel told me...I looked up your phone number. Because Angel went to fight and he told me about you once and I thought--if he lived? He's...if he's not dust, then he's in Rome. With you. But not __**with**__ you, unless--unless he is. With you, which is, okay, not fine, but I guess I'll deal, but I only...it's only that I need to hear from him. My name is Nina, and you're Buffy, and we both love him but--"_ a note of hysteria crept into her voice, _"Angel, baby, if you're there please...please just call me, me and my sister are in San Fran with a friend, and I have to know you're okay, but... Yeah. Just, call me."_

Then the number and a beep and Buffy, gutted. Quietly, cleanly gutted.

Angel told his _girlfriend_ about her? His needy, stupid, probably _blonde_ girlfriend? The girlfriend who tracked her number down and was--if she interpreted correctly--a werewolf?

Eww.

"The hell," she grumbles, standing by the answering machine.

"The _hell_," she mumbles, stalking through the cemetery.

A punch and another vamp is dust. She's two parts glad he's not here, otherwise she'd probably put the handy-dandy stake she's clutching to use, and then the other one third part of her is worried as all get-out. If he gave someone her number, he had a clear plan to lay low at her place. That's always Angel, skulking behind her back and not telling her a damn thing and why the hell does she even care, because he's obviously not here and she shouldn't even be thinking of him _shut up, demon in my belly!_

She cares, because along with the two parts angry and the one part worried, there's another part pleased, because even though he hadn't thought to invite him to his little end-of-days battle, he knew he could count on her for cleanup. Everyone knows the cleanup is the hardest part.

Her boots scuff along the dust covered path and she wipes an inexplicable tear that's fallen down her cheek. She's a little margarita of messes, shake tumble and serve. All she needs right now is to see him, to know that their cycle will keep on going. Maybe she's not ready for the end of that dance they've been dancing for years now, but isn't that the point?

Buffy's not ready for the end.

But all the wishing and quiet rumination doesn't help, because the earth keeps on turning and vamps keep on rising and people keep on making love in their little Italian flats _behind paper-thin walls thanks so freaking much _and Buffy can't breathe. Her angst does not usurp her freaking duty, she knows that by now. There are things to do, monsters to kill, a life to _live_. What she told Dawn that night is true: the hardest thing in this world is to live in it. To just live, when everything you thought you had to live for narrows into that one person who's always held your heart but doesn't seem to know how to hold a phone and say, "Hi I'm still on this plane of existence we on for next year's annual angstathon dont be a stranger 'kay bye."

Buffy tends to get inappropriate when she's this worried and not showing it.

The demon sleeps as the day wane on, under the cool chill of no news, no notes, no Angel. All mention of any survivors in L.A has been combed over, pored over with the meticulous fervor of a girl searching for the last remnant of a puzzle she's never felt snapped into place. If Angel lived (no, he lived, she thinks stubbornly, he lived he lived he lived shut _up_ Giles) then he's doing a damn good job of hiding himself. Blending into the night, probably skulking around and brooding over the supreme failure that was his last stand against an age-old evil corporation. And Buffy starts getting a bit desperate, because what happens if she's cookies all of a sudden and then--

What if he's not there? The timer will go off and she'll sit there in cookie-oven-hell, all scorched and burnt and alone.

What a stupid analogy. She kicks the dirt viciously and goes home to another night of tossing and turning and that lovely dream of ice-cream and a beating heart and pale skin in the sunlight.

Time goes on, and she grows emptier and emptier. But fuller and fuller, if that makes sense. She makes new friends in Rome and keeps in touch with the Scoobs, and Dawn is happy and Buffy's gaining weight in her hips, and there's so many _shoes_. She's living but she's not alive. She's not free. That promise, the echo of a tomorrow with Angel, that had kept her going, striving for a life that could find her well-baked and finally ready...it's gone. And it's not even for-sure gone, it's maybe-gone-with-the-wind-in-a-cloud-of-dust gone. It's unresolved.

There's still that hole in her heart that only he could ever fill. Buffy meets people here and there, sometimes lets the Immortal share her bed, searches aimlessly for the next wrong guy to snare her detached interest. They're all wrong. Everyone she's ever been with has been wrong wrong wrong _sorry_ Riley Spike Giacomo Alberto dude from upstairs. It's always been Angel and it'll always be Angel and god, the one demon she can't slay lives in her chest. This stupid, unkillable, unignorable betrayal. Hope.

Stupid apocalypses and stupid macho vampire who has to go fight it all alone and leave her hanging for fucking ever.

Outwardly, she learns to accept the lack of resolution and jokes that her denouement has been denou_not_ted. The men on the street, just vaguely attractive natives with dark hair and noble features and a solid build. Not the bearers of any overly painful familiarity. Hope? Just some slayer from Nebraska with a hippie mom. Not a breathing, tangible thing living inside her. She keeps telling herself that, for almost three years. She thinks it's three years and a half too long to mourn, but then, weren't she and Angel supposed to be a forever sorta deal anyway?

Meanwhile, the shadows keep watching her but she never looks fast enough and then--

And then.

One night, he ends up on her doorstep and even though the story's not over, not by a long shot, somewhere someone shuts a book with a satisfied finality and Buffy just asks, "How was your apocalypse?"

He says, "It's over," all tired and weary, and she says, "It's never over." And then he smiles and he agrees, takes her hand. Something inside of her fills up, bubbling over with glee? relief? happiness? contentment? Whatever it is, it's feeling, and life jars into motion again and she thinks, he can't ever leave. He can't ever leave because this will be my ending, my finale, standing in my gorgeous Roman flat with my gorgeous Irish vampire lover guy. It's a nice future, she thinks earnestly, if only he won't leave.

But he does leave, of course. That's what he does.

And she gets on with her life. That's what _she_ does.

'Cause things haven't changed, and she's not cookie dough still and she's got a pretend life to live for awhile before either of them are ready to admit resolution for their endless saga of soulmates and meant-to-be. She has a demon now, too, she tells Angel, and Buffy's pretty sure that both of their demons are in demon cahoots, making some pretty devious plans for later on in the future, but she's okay with that.

Hope carries her on little itty bitty cliched wings as she vicariously, viciously zooms through her days and Angel does the same. He even calls Nina back, but before he goes, he gives Buffy's hand a squeeze, and says that he's glad he's around to, you know, not get any older. She teases him and says she's not sure, he's got a couple of wrinkles.

Then he's off, and it's the same old same old, and Buffy's still sort of empty, but it's the good sort of empty that's just waiting to be filled. That knows, one day, she _will_ be filled.

She blushes at that, on the crowded Italian street where she pokes at a _cannoli_ and goes through the motions. Sexual innuendo? Timeless.

Buffy and Angel? Timeless.

She's okay with her and Angel going off and doing their own stuff. She hasn't always been okay with it, but she's always sort of _had_ to at least accept it. In the back of her mind, she'd always solaced herself with the thought that they would be there for each other in a pinch. Then the pinch came, hard and bruising, and she thought he was gone, and now Buffy's just relieved that he's still in this world. So fine, they can live their own lives.

As long as somewhere down the line, they get their ending, dammit.

finis


End file.
